Russia ‘working well’ on anti-doping – report

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) President Craig Reedie told Russian state news outlet RT earlier this week that the country is “working well” on cracking down on doping.

“You can’t do this progress overnight. This is step, by step, by step,” Reedie said.

“We’ve told them what they have to do. It’s up to them to do it. And I want them to do it as quickly as they can,” he added.

Deputy PM Vitaly Mutko had earlier pledged that Russia would comply with a plan by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to retest all drug test samples taken from its athletes at the 2012 and 2014 Olympic games.

“The IOC has now decided to retest all the samples; let them retest,” said Mutko, adding that Russia will closely monitor the process.

Mutko, who was the sports minister at the time of those games, suggested that he does not expect Russia to be barred from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea..

This comes after WADA published the second part of an investigation into doping by Russian athletes revealing that over 1,000 of the those competing in summer, winter and Paralympic sporting events have been involved in or have benefited from manipulations to conceal positive doping tests over a four-year period.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in early December that Moscow would not respond “emotionally” to the allegations.

Meanwhile, Indian state news agency IANS reported that a senior Russian sports official vowed his country would take the report seriously in spite of the “unpleasant” accusations.